This content was taken from the book [ Learning Korean with a smile] .
Hangeul is a phoneic writing system. Each symbol corresponds to a sound, and each character is decoded from from left-to-right and then from top-to-bottom.
Hangual is a phonetic writing system. Each symbol corresponds to a sound, for example ' ㅁ' is pronounced as 'm' , ' 아' or ' ㅏ ' as ' a ' in ' father' ,and ' ㄴ' as ' n '.
When you put the three together, you get ' 만 ' , which is pronounced as ' man' in 'manga' (only pronouncing the characters of the world that are written in red ).
Eech character is decoded from left-to-right and then from top-to-bottom. The vowel 'ㅣ' is pronounced as 'i' in ' in', ' 오' as ' o' in ' oh my' ,and '우' as ' ooo in 'cool '.
Thus, '민' is pronounced as 'minute ', and '문' as 'moon'.
Some characters are based on only two symbols, so '니' is pronounced as 'nifty', '나' as ' Tina', '노' as 'north' , and '누' as 'noon', Easy, isnt' it ?
Well, not quite that easy.
Otherwise it would not be so interesting to study. There are several rules that guide the compostion of Hangeul characters.
The most important rule is that each Hangeul character must start with a consonant and must have one vowel.
Based on this rule , '미' and '민' are valid Hangeul characters, but 'ㅁ' or 'l ' is invalid or incomplete.
You may have observed that some vowels appear next to a consonant, while others appear below, such as the ' ㅣ' in '미' ,and ' 우 ' in ' 무'.
The reason is that some vowels are vertical while others are horizontal.
Comments
Post a Comment